Gearfuse

Good news for those of you who are sick of the iPhone. Palm has finally let loose the Mojo SDK, which will enable developers to build apps for its upcoming Pre phone. In addition to the standard fare in a phone-based SDK, Palm is offering “cloud computing” services which emulate push technology. Sounds like someone is trying to compete with RIM and Apple!

Great news and all, but still nothing official on the Pre. Rumor has it that sometime in late April or early May we’ll see the Pre drop on the Sprint network. Until then, one can dream about clouds.

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The iPod is hands down the most popular music player on the market nowadays. To really get the most out of it, you’ll need to whip out your Arduino microcontroller and the soldering iron. Using a new library written to allow control of an iPod through a the 13-pin connector, you’ll be able to write programs that can get the Arduino and iPod talking in ways never seen before. If you build it, they will come.

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We’re in dire need of some new LEGO stories here at Gearfuse, so be sure to send us some tips. In the mean time, check out this awesome LEGO Safe. It features a working electronic lock and weighs 14.3 pounds, making it quite the usable safe. It uses the LEGO Mindstorms NXT system, allowing for a fully programmable safe. Of course, if you really wanted your roommate’s stash inside, you’re probably better off introducing it to a crowbar.

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Here’s an Arduino with a shitload of modules and shields attached to it. Blogger Matt sells these on his site, Liquidware.com, for $249.93. It comes with an Arduino, a MeCap Backpack, a TouchShield Stealth, an ExtenderShield and an InputShield.

The TouchShield reads the position of the joystick, and outputs a little colored dot on the TouchShield screen. It’s essentially an open source portable gaming system. With the appropriate programming, you’ll be playing Missile Command in no time. Hit the jump to check out the vid.
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Fancy a PDF read on a new topic? Of course you do! Learning is essential to getting into a hacker mindset. How are you going to exploit a server’s vulnerabilities without knowing any Perl? Lucky for us, the team at HackNMod found some shady FTP site (with an HTML-based index) that features hundreds of scanned books in PDF form. You’ll find titles on hacking, programming and plenty of other subjects available for download. Get on it, though. Who knows how long this will stay up before O’Reilly or McGraw-Hill sends over a DMCA takedown notice.

Obviously, bookends are not required.

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Those of you skilled in ActionScript or Processing might want to give this formula a try. Designed by Clifford Pickover, the mathematical formula will generate butterflies of all shapes and sizes. I bet by using an Arduino to generate objects and using Processing to render the output, you could end up with some beautiful patterns and shapes.

Oh, but the math! Here we are: p = ecos(?) – 2 cos(4 ?) + sin5(?/12)

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A few years ago, the phrase DVR meant TiVo. If you were recording TV shows, you were TiVoing. Times changed, TiVo panicked and the company stopped offering lifetime subscriptions. Ever since then, TiVo’s charisma has been flawed and the company has been offering extras to subscribers to placate them year after year.

Thankfully, the company has realized the error of its ways and will now offer lifetime subscriptions again. Unfortunately, the price-tag that comes with it isn’t all that great. Be prepared to shell out $399. Not only that, the subscription is box-specific, meaning that you can’t upgrade to that Series 3 without shelling out more bucks.

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If you want your children to grow up to be big and strong nerds just like you, you’ve got to start teaching them young. And let’s face it, 11 year olds aren’t going to sit there and listen to you read from a C++ book. That’s where C Jump comes in for the win.

Made for children 11 and up, C Jump is a board game (even geekier than other board games we’ve seen) which teaches kids the basics of C, C++, and Java coding. According to the product page, the “game helps to develop understanding of a complete computer program, formed by logical sequences of commands.” Bribe them to play with McDonald’s. If they don’t play, they don’t get their toy. (more…)